Predictions are tricky business.It is very easy to make a mistake, but it is very difficult to guess. But that's exactly what we're going to do. As the tenth anniversary of the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper approaches, I will try to predict what bitcoin, blockchain, alternative cryptocurrencies and decentralization will be like in 20 years.
This is one of those articles that will seem incredibly stupid or mind-blowingly brilliant when I get old and gray-haired. But I do not care. I'm ready for it.
Instead, we will reflect on how technology and society will evolve along with it.
The idea was born in 1941, when, after walking with a dog through the forest, he discovered thorns on her fur. This concept languished in his mind for the next seven years. In 1948, he began work on the creation of small hooks, and only ten years later he finally succeeded, and he launched mass production.
After opening the company in 1950. he expected unprecedented demand.
But it didn't happen.
He waited another five years before organizing the space program in the 1960s, when Velcro helped astronauts with bulky and bulky spacesuits that were difficult to get on and off. The rest of the world thinks only about their own problems that need to be solved, and not about what idea or ideology will stand behind it. Shortly thereafter, the skiing industry incorporated this idea into boot designs.
How much time has passed from the moment the idea was born to its implementation, to the creation of a successful business?
About twenty five years old.
And finally, we can still learn something from Stoll before I lay out my predictions about cryptocurrencies.
His biggest mistake was the sixth and final reason why people are unable to see the future. He took existing inventions, projected them into the future, and used them to create solutions to future problems. Fundamentally wrong!
Existing inventions can only solve existing problems. The problems of the future require entirely new solutions.
In the article, Stoll argues that CD-ROM books will never replace real books. He was right - reading books on a CD from a terrible CRT monitor that damages the retina was very inconvenient. But having understood this, we can understand what characteristics the future invention should have.
It is almost impossible to know what it will look like, but we can determine its characteristics in order to understand what the invention should be.
Let's see how it works:
CDs are inconvenient. Blurry text on the monitors of the time was hard to read. This hurt my eyes. The computers were huge and not very mobile. Even laptops back then were bricks that worked against your legs. Nobody wanted to read anything on them.
But Stoll also did not take into account the shortcomings of the books.
Books are heavy too. They are made from trees! They can be easily lost or damaged due to the weather. You can only carry a small number of books with you.
Based on this, we understand what the solution should be:
Reading has never been easier with The Kindle. The device is now waterproof, making it even better than traditional books. Successful new solutions must have the same function but with new and improved features. Of course, we already know the answer: Kindle and iPad.
Both devices are incredibly convenient, completely hide the storage from users, protect information with backup and do not harm the eyes.
Solutions start with understanding problems, asking the right questions about how to solve them, and clearly defining what features a better product should have.
From the foregoing, we derive three principles that will help us predict the future:
Great, now let's look into the crystal ball and find out the fate of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
I hope we have better luck than Stoll and this article doesn't become the basis for a Boing Boing article that makes me look like an idiot.
We will start with a few simple predictions, and then move on to more complex and far-reaching, as well as conflicting predictions.
For each item, I have attached a confidence meter that shows how confident I am in the scenario presented.
Cryptocurrency savvy and non-savvy people see it as a bubble that will burst and prices will plummet.
They are right. So what?
This is not the end of the story. This is just the beginning.
Today we are in amazing euphoria. So much potential. We literally already feel a decentralized future. It's around the corner! Will come at any moment.
Of course, things will most likely go wrong. The bubble will burst. Vitalik is right. .
But after this explosion, real working ideas will appear.
Gartner Hype Cycle During the eight-year experiment with cryptocurrencies, we work with hope for the future, but all we have is speculation and smart contracts. Creepy and almost unusable applications are created. When you hit send and send $5,000 online, your nerves are on edge. You hope you copied and pasted the address correctly and your money doesn't evaporate!
When the Internet bubble burst, the shares of many companies that are successful today fell by 85%. And yet they survived, and a bright future awaited them. Amazon and Google dominate.
The same will happen with cryptocurrencies.
The 10% of projects that survive the carnage will become the Amazon, Google and Facebook of the future. The same is likely to happen with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, not to mention future governments, digital direct democracies or delegative democracies.
Innovation is hard work. You are literally trying to create something that doesn't exist!
You have no leadership, no blueprints, no business models to build upon. Nothing. You are on your own! There is only you and your imagination. 90% of all people and companies will fail!
A blockchain without a coin, like a market without money, is nonsense.
A blockchain controlled by a sovereign, a corporation, an elite or a mob is nonsense.
This is nonsense, because the main purpose of the blockchain is to distribute power throughout the system. By not allowing one group to arbitrarily control or change the rules of the system, decentralized cryptocurrencies and applications provide a powerful system of checks and balances against destructive actions directed against it.
If the blockchain belongs to five different banks, then it is no longer a blockchain, but a database. The real blockchain is when banks, regulators, shareholders and customers of the bank all have access to the blockchain and can interfere with each other's actions. A system of checks and balances that protects power - that's the point!
The state cryptocurrency will become an absolute and perfect perversion of this idea. But it won't matter. They will do it anyway.
Instead of distributing power, they will gain even more influence, gaining the ability to monitor every citizen's spending with impunity and automatically collect taxes on salaries and sales of goods and services. This is why authoritarian governments are so eager to create official state-owned cryptocurrencies. They are looking forward to having that freak show money in your pockets.
They will outlaw cash using one of the three following pretexts:
Of course, when half of your money goes to Amazon, food and rent, you don't care about these points, but if you loudly declare the fight against these three points, then you can easily get half the population to do what you need, and moreover, they will do it of their own free will.
Remember the conversation between American psychologist Gustav Gilbert and Nazi Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials? Goering said that most people will follow their leaders no matter what they tell them, be it democracy or fascist dictatorship.
Gilber naively replied: “There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have a say in the election of representatives, but in the US, only Congress can declare war."
But Goering laughed and said, “Yes, that's very good. But with or without a voice, people can always be forced to obey leaders. It's simple. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and discredit the pacifists for their lack of patriotism and for putting the country in danger. It works the same in any country.”
Government cryptocurrencies will be a very bitter pill for those who truly believe in cryptocurrencies today, but they will have to swallow it.
It can also be assumed that hybrid systems with decentralized and centralized cryptocurrencies will appear, and they can be developed right now to avoid the impending tsunami. It is better to supplement the existing system with blockchain to fix it from the inside than to just ignore it and wait for it to become hostile.
Decentralized cryptocurrencies will not disappear just because centralized cryptocurrencies will have more power. Many governments will try to exterminate them, but in the end they will fail. The reasons are simple.
Governments will not be able to come to a consensus for the same reason that it is difficult to come to a consensus on blockchain. They won't be able to do it. Some governments will love decentralization and some will hate it.
While some countries openly oppose it, many others, especially those most affected by the influence of Europe and the US dollar over the last century, will openly support decentralized cryptocurrencies.
Countries in Latin America, open-minded and uncompromising globalists like Singapore, as well as the historical banker of the world, Switzerland and many other countries in Asia and Africa will embrace decentralized cryptocurrencies with open arms, even if they have to stick to the path of existing powers.
If all countries do not come to a consensus, then decentralized currencies will not go anywhere, even if centralized cryptocurrencies gain power.
But in order to stay afloat, decentralized cryptocurrencies must develop rapidly. They need a killer app that will spread them around the world. It must be something so important that people cannot imagine their lives without it. This will draw the existing power players into the system and they will start using their power to protect the application from attacks from outside.
I outlined one of the ways in my article about the game method of distributing money. But this is only one way. There are many others. If you are working on a platform right now, then remember that this is a race against time until centralized cryptocurrencies take over.
This is a classic example of the introduction of old inventions into new system. The Brave browser is great and I'll really love it if it's combined with BAT and/or universal payment system, which will automatically convert cryptocurrencies without the need for an exchange. But I do not believe that this will be the final interface of the blockchain. I think this is just a potential intermediate step.
What should a killer app look like? I dont know. But here's what I know:
It should also be something completely new and original that highlights and develops the best characteristics of the blockchain while minimizing its weakest points.
Maybe a decentralized assistant or an attention filter? The possibilities are endless! Forward!
Blockchain-based systems are only the first successful application of decentralized consensus mechanisms.
People are already coming up with new things like Tangle and HashGraph .
It doesn't really matter if both of these projects fail in the long run, because other projects with a different foundation will emerge. This is the guaranteed truth.
I believe that in the next twenty years there will be dozens, if not hundreds, of experimental distributed consensus protocols that will surpass Visa in terms of transaction capabilities and will be supplemented by artificial intelligence systems.
Also, it is likely that none of these systems will be invented by people.
Artificial intelligence will very quickly consider all ideas and come up with systems that humanity could not come up with even in a hundred years. He will draw inspiration from nature, insect life, roots and other biological systems such as proteins.
One or two of these systems will turn into metasystems and will manage all the coins, uniting them, as well as the entire system as a huge fractal that has an infinite number of child networks.
Today, using cryptocurrencies is very inconvenient.
If I make a typo or copy and paste incorrectly, my money will be gone forever. If there is any horrendous program failure, then I will lose my money forever. If someone breaks into my computer or phone, the money will never come back to me.
See the trend? Any mistake and you're in trouble. It's like riding a motorcycle on the edge of a two-centimeter mountain road with no guardrails.
The mainstream wallets are slow, hard to use, and just plain awful. The last time I upgraded Ethereum, I forgot to save my private keys, so I had to restore them. This year my old bitcoin is stuck in an old version of Multibit from 2013. It took me a week to get it out of there. The software mistakenly thought that I made a transaction that was never made.
Imagine that these wallets will be used for long-term storage, and you decide to use them in five years. Can you use them? What will happen when quantum computers appear and we have to completely update the basic protocols that are the basis of the system?
The average person will never be able to do this. No chance. Two decades in the IT industry have taught me that people can, and certainly will, mess up their computers in ways that the tech savvy don't even think of. Murphy's Law in action.
But the situation is even worse, because we cannot cancel the transaction or protect it from errors. I believe that transactions will be frozen, rolled back and protected by a variety of algorithmic methods, as well as ways to deposit money at home and return stolen funds. It's like an automated call to the bank after your credit card is stolen.
If grandma can't do it, then forget about it. All people are not an IT person who can easily work in a Linux terminal. Only systems that offer all features old system, as well as completely new characteristics, can be introduced in large quantities.
Let's go back to books on CD from the 1980s. They had new stats, tables, and colors that you could keep.
But that wasn't enough, because CDs had fatal flaws. In his book The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil calls this a phase of evolutionary development called the "false pretender." The new technology has some advantages, but it has too many disadvantages that prevent it from becoming popular and replacing the old technology.
Only with the advent of the Kindle and iPad, e-readers began to combine the properties of reading ordinary books, including portability and eye-friendliness, with new features, among which it became possible to carry a thousand books with you at the same time. A dead tree cannot compete with this. Such an invention could indeed be successful.
Cryptocurrencies must follow the same path - from total failure to the transfer of unprecedented new power to people and companies that will ensure world domination.
I also believe that many systems will be created because of the desire of people to pass on digital money to their children. For this we need special banks, created by groups of people, or algorithmic banks and bulletproof wallets with multi-signatures, decentralized cloud storage or foglet services that will be the final judges.
It will not be enough to just share the keys and give them to your trusted friends and loved ones. It just seems like a good idea at first. Friends stop being friends, people get divorced and die or worse. We need something better, something completely automated.
Consider how difficult it would be to transfer bitcoins to your loved ones today. What if you die tomorrow, or get hit on the head and forget your password?
Even if you have everything ready for it, your plan is not very good.
You would have to make a will, copy your private keys and wallet to a safe place, hand over the password to a real estate lawyer and hope that he doesn't steal your money, and also that your USB stick or Trezor/Nano doesn't get broken. You can also create a multisig wallet with friends and family and hope that no one contributes another version to Github with a backdoor or a bug that ruins everything. All these methods do not inspire confidence. This is simply unacceptable.
By the way, if you want to open a cryptocurrency business that will benefit the whole world in the future, then I propose to solve the problem of inheritance. You will be gladly paid for it.
I foresee drag & drop smart contracts and AI-created self-deposit wills. In fact, the blockchain itself will become a bank and customer service department, perhaps using biometric identifiers and third parties with proof of stake or decentralized artificial intelligence that can verify your loved ones, as well as run the necessary operations after your death. Automated password and key regeneration will be a STOP command.
No matter what it looks like, we will need similar algorithmic control systems to dispense money to the right people and keep it from falling into the hands of thieves. We also need a system to protect against accidents, death, and loss of sanity.
Everything today existing coins are inextricably linked to their protocols.
I believe protocols will be abstracted for the purposes of exchanging, sending and receiving, and protecting and storing coins.
This will be a consequence of the evolution of today's servers, which will turn from metal boxes into virtual containers, and then off-server data processing will be carried out.
First, most coins cannot be scaled. Blockchain, the Holy Grail of any cryptosystem and the subject of so much controversy and controversy, cannot even come close to the level of Visa transactions. Bitcoin can only process a maximum of 7 transactions per second.
It should be possible to send coins as fast, as far and as often as we want.
It must be admitted that the 1 MB limit is a "crutch". Initially, Bitcoin had no limits. Then, overnight, Satoshi introduced a restriction into the main code without even mentioning it or explaining anything. Most likely, it was an awkward attempt to prevent DDoS attacks.
We can come up with a better defense. Are you in favor of 1 MB? What about 2 MB in SegWit2X? Or are you in favor of an 8MB Bitcoin Cash block? Wrong. All these solutions are wrong and absurd.
According to the guys from the Lightning Network, if seven billion people made just two transactions a day, then the situation would look like this:
In order to come up with a real solution to the problem, we need to think differently, and not come up with all sorts of nonsense. For Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to survive, they must change. In the future, it will be easy to introduce new security, new cryptographic algorithms, when quantum computers appear, higher speeds and innovations.
We can't just rely on Satoshi's successes and assume he's thought of everything.
This is not true.
Honestly, who cares what Satoshi thinks? He abandoned the project. If he really wanted to lead it, he would show up as Linus on Linux. But he didn't. He left the project, and we ourselves have to deal with him.
So let's get on with it, because the current system will not survive or will become a slave to expensive processors, as it is now.
One way is to abstract away all the protocols and run the equivalent of the old coins in virtual machines or containers. Thus, the rules themselves will separate from the coins.
This is just one of the ways. For a real breakthrough, blockchain needs real innovation.
We need to think fast, otherwise, while we are arguing, we need a block of 1 MB or 2 MB, there will be a crypto-ruble and a crypto-yuan.
This is also necessary because in the future we will need to protect against attacks by hostile system participants and APT (advanced persistent threat - advanced persistent threat) on protocols. Think of the Great Firewall of China that attacks or blocks transactions by confusing packets and headers, and the "man in the middle" in it is a state representative. The NEM architecture was the right first step, as it includes firewall-like host protection.
The best solution is likely to be external blockchains that protect rules that will be uploaded to all nodes of the network and will detect intrusions, act as firewalls and monitor protocols, have a self-evolving set of rules and an artificial intelligence-based countermeasures system.
Right now we are creating coins for everything. Created an identity platform like Civic? Create a coin. Created a decentralized DNS? Create a coin and ICO!
The dumbest app on the blockchain? You, my friend, need a coin!
In fact, the coin is not needed.
Coins will be divided into different categories. Right now, I can only imagine four types of necessary coins that (or post-blockchain technology) will be exchanged according to need:
Deflation coins are for savings and investments. Over time, they will grow in value and bring profit. Everyone needs such investments, for this, first of all, bitcoin appeared.
The coin of inflation is today's dollar. No one bitcoins to buy a flat screen TV only to realize in a few years when the price of bitcoin skyrockets that they spent $175,000 on it. We need stablecoins that can be spent. It will be the classic "storage medium" that Paul Krugman talks about all the time. Such a coin will be needed to buy and sell everyday goods.
The action token is for free online actions, such as voting or sending a text message. These are not nanotransactions. Changing your password shouldn't cost two pennies. As the guys at EOS say, “If it costs three cents to load a page on Amazon, no one will load that page.”
Reward tokens are intended for interactions in the system. This is digital karma that motivates good behavior and punishes bad behavior.
You can literally build a universal system with these four coins. Any other coin will be just an additional component of these coins with different metadata.
Are you a Keynesian or an Austrian free marketer?
Who cares?
All our economic theories based on research on a limited amount of information in the analog age of ink and wood pulp. All existing economic theories will prove to be as advanced as cave drawings as new economic systems emerge over the years.
This is the new coins: the war of microeconomic systems. This is economics according to Darwin.
Some of the basic laws of housekeeping are true, but many of them will simply fall apart along the way. This will happen because the dominant systems on the blockchain will have real-time and global economic data, and not just a few pencil-on-paper guesses, as was the case a hundred years ago.
If artificial intelligence collects real-time statistics around the world, we can see how steel prices in one country adjust, while construction prices in another country skyrocket due to this. We can trace world production with incredible accuracy, and much of what we learn will surprise us very much.
Most likely, the richest DAO (decentralized autonomous organization - decentralized autonomous organization) will be the DAO that offers an open version of Visa. Most likely, it will take its share from transactions and the largest miners, as well as finance the future development and management of the network.
Such an organization will not store all the money, it will play the role of a link that will transfer money to other companies and DAOs using smart contracts, as well as to the state, local governments and other non-governmental organizations that benefit the network.
For this, DAO needs to evolve. Today we are introducing DAO in the form of a smart contract. And this is not at all what is needed.
"O wondrous new world where such people live! DAO will need artificial intelligence to manage the rules and enforce them. The organization will also need to automatically generate template management models. Management in DAO is everything. So far, good enough scalable models for managing large corporations, such as an open meritocratic workspace, have not yet been invented. The first DAOs failed because they ran into a .
Everyone pretends to be the boss, and no one wants to take out the trash. It's very hard to order paperclips when every employee at the DAO is king.
For effective work the team must distribute roles and stars among themselves. People also need to understand their role and accept it, even if it changes after a person gains merit and experience in the system.
It is very difficult to organize management in a corporate environment. How to fire a person for not fulfilling duties in the DAO? How do you make sure the guy in charge of ICO security is qualified and not just chosen because everyone likes him? You can't lose $45 million in Bitcoin just because Bob was chosen for his "Burning Man" stories and his drawing skills.
Automated enterprise and non-profit architectures of the future will have to develop incredible tools for continuous management and decision making, as well as articles of incorporation in the form of code.
People who fought in World War II had one or two jobs throughout their lives. Today we have five or six works.
The people of the future will be working five or six jobs at the same time.
Half of the sources of income will be automated and passive, like, for example, cryptocurrency guaranteed income. Artificial intelligence will select you a job. The machines will know your capabilities and skills and will select vacancies for you in a short time. You don't even have to look for a job.
Imagine a software project that needs insanely huge code, about ten trillion lines. Software projects are getting more complex and growing. AI will write and test the first half, and humans will write the second half. The project will run on a distributed decentralized system that proposes and distributes tasks, acts as a project manager, and offers jobs to programmers on a worldwide network based on reputation and skill.
Imagine Github artificial intelligence married UpWork and the Mechanical Turk system.
Such a system could be used for manufacturing and any other blue collar job that could create a big gap between the rich and the poor today.
If you are currently developing a system using the “move fast and break everything” DevOps approach, then you should know that such an approach is likely to be destructive to systems that can algorithmically control many aspects of our lives.
Instead, you need to slow down, reflect and not break everything.
You need to think of all the ways to destroy the system, otherwise you will not be able to protect it. It would be naive not to consider all the ways that your enemies, those who do not share your views on openness, freedom and cooperation, can use the blockchain.
I have already finished half of the article called “If Hitler had a blockchain”. To be honest, I don't want to post it because I don't want to give the bad guys fresh ideas, but rest assured, it might not help them much. Their dark minds are already hard at work finding a way to use the blockchain as a system of repression and control.
I'm deliberately throwing dust in my eyes so as not to release all the ideas into the collective unconscious, but think about digital tracking of all aspects of your life, where you go and what you do, the statistical calculation of your behavior, as well as behavioral algorithms that motivate you to accepting an ideology, and finally think of invulnerable digital rights management and open genocide.
In mid-May, the Skolkovo Foundation conducted a survey among scientists and experts of the Foundation about how they see the future of the world in 20 years. The residents of the survey were asked what role artificial intelligence and robots will play in human life, whether it will be possible to clone a person, whether flying cars will appear, whether a cure for cancer will be invented. During the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Kirill Kaem, Senior Vice President for Innovation at the Skolkovo Foundation assessed the prospects of certain technological innovations.
“When answering the question of what the technologies of the world will be like in 20 years, we must take into account that the development of various industries occurs with different speed, says Mr. Kaem. “If the IT industry is developing very quickly, and for it 20 years is a huge period during which several revolutions can occur, then much less will change in medicine over the same period.”
Cars will become flying, but not earlier than in 20 years. Some progress has already been made in this area. Amazon recently launched a line of delivery drones. However, in order for cars and buses to take off into the air, much larger energy capacities are needed. At the same time, these fuel cells must weigh relatively little. So far, there is no such technology. 20 years for its development may not be enough, but in 30-40 years it is quite realistic.
Yes, although the robots will not be the same as we see them in science fiction films. They will not talk, they will not look like people, and their functionality will remain highly specialized. Most likely, they will be similar to modern robotic vacuum cleaners. There will be smart "teapots", "microwave ovens" and much more. The concept of “smart home” will finally come into use, stuffed with all sorts of technical innovations that make life easier for a person.
Now humanity is moving towards the fact that in 20 years the entire population of the Earth will undergo continuous genetic certification from birth. This will make it possible to identify predisposition to diseases, assess the likelihood of a disease and take measures in advance that will allow it to be avoided, including with the use of genetic drugs. However, cancer will not be completely defeated. Firstly, during this period he, too, can change and adapt to the means of treatment. And secondly, we still cannot prevent old age, when the risk of oncology inevitably increases.
No, for so short term do not have time. However, life expectancy will increase - by 3-4 years in the next 20 years. Medicines will get better, nutrition will improve, life will become more comfortable. All this will affect the average life expectancy. In addition, large corporations and private investors are investing mountains of money in the study of the aging process.
In 20 years, cloning will not yet come into use. From a technological point of view, the question is simple. In agriculture, this is already a standard procedure. The reason why human cloning is unlikely to be possible lies in the ethical plane. For a long time there will be disputes whether cloning is permissible, whether a clone can be considered a person. In addition, cloning now involves medical use. But cutting organs out of a human clone is also a dubious idea from an ethical point of view.
Technological development and ethical issues are generally a separate big topic. In many countries, it is the moral side of things that stops technological progress. Until humanity decides on its position on the controversial issues of using this or that technology, it will not enter everyday life. But those countries that quickly come to terms with such innovations will gain an advantage in the technological race.
It is still impossible to turn the Sahara desert into a flowering garden, as well as to prevent natural disasters. At the same time, climate tracking and analysis systems will be improved to more accurately predict weather and natural disasters. In addition, local climate changes will be available, for example, rainfall control in agriculture.
Now a person loses a significant part of his anonymity on the Web voluntarily. Social networks and other modern means of communication have led to the fact that each person declares himself on the Internet - by posting photos, marking his geolocation, etc. But still, if a person does not want to give himself away on the Internet, he will not give himself away.
The second question is the work of the states of the world to deanonymize their citizens on the Web. AT different countries it is at a different level, but there are still many means of circumventing restrictions on the Internet. In addition, not only hacking methods, but also user information protection systems are being modernized every year. This race will continue in 20 years, and a small advantage is likely to be on the side of the defense.
Yes. Now most of the administrative processes can be easily outsourced to artificial intelligence. The machine can process large amounts of data and find errors much better than a man. In addition, the administration of basic processes is a routine process, machines can handle it better. There are no obstacles to creating the necessary technologies.
The study of space will remain purely practical because of its high cost. The development of the earth's orbit and the creation of satellite systems will continue. As for the exploration of the Moon or landing on other planets, much will depend on the need of mankind for rare earth minerals. Until their production pays off. If over the next 20 years there are enthusiasts like Ilona Mask, ready to invest in this, then a certain jump is possible. Otherwise, the situation with space exploration is unlikely to change dramatically, although space technology will continue to improve.
The gap between the predictions of science fiction writers, scientists - futurologists, technical prophets of various kinds is shrinking year by year: no one will be surprised by space flights, robots, or liquid LCD displays. We present to your attention the average attempts to predict what awaits us in the year 2030. 
1. Everything you say or do will be recorded. Humanity will be united in a truly global network, consisting not only of computers, but also of the people themselves: each will be assigned its own ip-address, or another constant by means of a sewn-in nano-chip that opens access to the global network to every "cog" - whether it be a car or human. It will be possible to fix each step, and after a while to reproduce if necessary.
2. Genetically modified organisms will appear everywhere, despite the attempts of many scientists and ordinary people to stop this process. At present, nothing can stop the development of genetic engineering, unless a nuclear war breaks out (don't let it), or an asteroid falls on Earth (let's knock three times on wood).
Biofarms with genetically modified plants and animals will produce tens and hundreds of times more food than is happening now.
3. Cars as we know them will disappear from our roads. In fact, the roads themselves may disappear from the face of the earth, leaving room only for air transport.
4. Specialization of scientific activity, office work will reach a maximum - the position of "chief stapler" or "mop manager" will cease to be anecdotal. All smaller and specific niches of activity will be occupied by appropriate specialists.
5. Most likely, there will no longer be legislation localized by country and region - cybernetic legal system will control the life and death of criminals living both in Alaska and in the middle of Australia.
6. Professions and specialties will be updated almost every day - we feel an increasing need for additional training and education today. In the future, retraining and additional training will no longer be innovations.
7. Genetic improvement of the human body is likely to take its rightful place in the system of sciences, despite the current ban on eugenics (the science of improving the human race).
8. Urbanization will reach 60% by 2030. The vast majority of the population will live in megacities and large settlements, in the suburbs and small villages there will be a limited number of farmers engaged in agriculture with robots and automated systems management.
9. The influence of religion on a person will increase. In a completely technogenic, cybernated society, the role of religion will increase many times over: firstly, a person needs to believe in something, and secondly, the methods of preaching are constantly being improved and enhanced by technology.
10. The electrification of our planet will increase by 83%. Electricity will penetrate into the most inaccessible corners of the globe. Naturally, consumption will also increase. electrical energy, however, by that time, alternative energy sources will take their rightful place.
Of course, all these predictions point to the general direction of the development of our civilization, but they are all based on research and progress trends that are relevant at the moment.
These changes have already begun. We can see how every day scientists and engineers make another revolution in the development of artificial intelligence, space flight, medicine and biology, getting closer to the universal basis of our life - DNA.
Speaking at the World Government Summit, held in Dubai, a theoretical physicist, famous popularizer of science, and author of many popular science books, Michio Kaku led a discussion on a topic that will affect us (by us, we mean all of humanity) in the next 20 years .
It was about the changes:
those things and technologies that will change our lives, entering into almost every aspect of it.
These changes have already begun. We can see how every day scientists and engineers make another revolution in the development of artificial intelligence, space flight, medicine and biology, getting closer to the universal basis of our life - DNA.
The development of science and technology is certainly inspiring, but the pace at which it is happening can create a certain level of anxiety for some. Moreover, according to Kaku, in the next twenty years everything around will become even more confusing.
Everything from toilets that can conduct chemical analysis on the go and give recommendations on how to reduce certain substances in the body, and ending with walls that will talk to us - Kaku described at the same time beautiful, a little frightening, and to some extent even comical picture of the world of tomorrow.
Kaku began by saying that time will change everything. Including our language, which will develop along with technology.
What does it mean?
For example, this means that over time, the word “computer” may disappear from the everyday life of human speech. No, of course, the word itself will remain, but we will lose the importance of the term itself.
In some countries, Kaku says, the word "computer" will disappear from use because these devices will become truly ubiquitous.
There will be no things left in the world that will not themselves be computers. Everything will be computerized.
The scientist continued with a topic about how 3D printing technologies will change the quality of our life.
“We are talking about a new world. A world where everything you can imagine, you can create yourself,” commented Kaku.
He described a world in which we can print out a new pair of shoes, jewelry, or any other item in our wardrobe. If your child wants a new toy, you don't have to go to the store to get it. All you need is to go online, download the design you like, upload it to your computer, and then print it on a 3D printer in the next room of your house, which, by the way, will probably also be printed using a 3D printer. , just bigger.
By the way, about the house.
Our dwellings will no longer be just dwellings. They become tools. Computerized, "live" instruments. And we will also communicate with the wallpaper. Yes, with wallpaper. Do you doubt?
“In the future, we will have “smart paper”. This paper will be able to show us absolutely any information at our request, just like the screens of our today's computers. We will communicate with the walls. And not only we, but they are with us. The architecture of our homes will change so much that our ordinary walls will become our smartphones, laptops and huge TV screens.”
Imagine yourself sitting in a room and talking loudly not only to all the things that surround you in it, but also at this moment being inside the farthest corners of the digital world. However, for some, this may seem depressing and cause a feeling of loneliness. But such is the world of the future.
Technologies will appear in our access that will help us establish contacts with other people located in other parts of the world. Kaku noted that such tools will allow you to share your thoughts and ideas with people whose language you do not even know.
“You can communicate in any language. Your contact lenses will help you with this, translating and reproducing the text written to you directly on your retina, ”commented the popularizer of science.
Want to freshen up and go somewhere? Regardless of where exactly you are going - far or not - you no longer need to have your own car. Yes, and you will also have no need to have a driving skill.
You will be transported by cars. On one's own. Self-managed.
In addition, you will be able to travel light, as you will have to take extra things with you more. Everything you need can be printed on a 3D printer right on the road.
We are approaching a future in which social and economic relationships will be completely different, Kaku noted.
“We are building a so-called “ideal capitalism”, in which there will be no concept of intermediaries and all the negative aspects of ordinary capitalism. The winner in this will be society, the losers - intermediaries, third parties. Exchangers,” said Kaku.
The last question of the discussion concerned ourselves directly.
“Artificial intelligence will be able to bring victory for us over what no king and no queen of the past could defeat - the aging process. Over time, we all grow old and die. The old breeds errors in work. Once we can use AI to compare millions of old people's genes with millions of young people's genes, then we can determine where and how exactly the aging process begins. And then just eradicate it."
The picture of the future, you see, promises to be attractive. But is it really so? It is difficult to answer this. Everything looks tempting, but let's return to this issue in 20 years. publishedIf you have any questions on this topic, ask them to specialists and readers of our project.
3D printers that “print” human organs, paper money that has completely disappeared from circulation, and pizza delivery drones. This is how the participants of the survey conducted in the United States see our world in 20 years. What other forecasts, which now seem incredible, did the inhabitants of the United States give for 2036.
Pizza delivered by drones
Become a part Everyday life, according to 66% of 2,088 Americans surveyed by London & Partners. Indeed, the largest stores in the US have long been thinking about using drones to transport goods by air.
Amazon, for example, began testing its Prime Air service three years ago to deliver parcels by air in 30 minutes, and Wal-Mart, the world's largest hypermarket chain by revenue, wants to adapt them to monitor inventory. Google also has its own project of flying delivery robots - Project Wing.
It will be possible to expect couriers from "heaven" at the doorstep of the house in a year or two. The current rules prohibit commercial use drones, however federal agency The US Civil Aviation Authority (FAA) is already working on easing the law.
Drivers will be replaced by cars on autopilot
By 2036, "ordinary" cars will give way to vehicles with artificial intelligence that can drive without a driver, 60% of Americans expect. IT giants, including Google, Uber, Apple, Tesla, and China's Baidu, are hard at work on things that can make driving safer, as well as reduce traffic jams and accidents.
Business Insider estimates that 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020. The development of the market will be facilitated by the reduction in the cost of owning a “smart” car, as well as the adoption of laws regulating the use of self-propelled vehicles.
Rise of biohacking
It would not be unusual to meet a person on the street with communication chips embedded under the skin, according to 49% of Americans. Biohacking - "modernization" of the human body by implanting electronics - is gaining momentum in last years, however, individual enthusiasts are still deciding to modify their body.
The most prominent representative of this trend is Istvan Zoltan, the leader of the American Transhumanist Party, which approves the use of scientific and technological progress (up to the complete replacement of organs) to improve human nature. Zoltan himself, who is running for president of the United States, has an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip embedded in his hand, which allows him to open doors without a key.
Another example is the Dutch entrepreneur Martin Wiesmeyer, who underwent surgery to implant a micro-enabled chip in both hands. contactless technology Near Field Communication (NFC). So, in one hand of the "biohacker" is stored Contact Information(it can be overwritten) to his electronic wallet, which can be scanned using any NFC smartphone, to another - an encrypted secret key to access "bitcoins".
"Paper" money will disappear
Cashless payment technologies will completely replace "physical" banknotes and coins, 69% of respondents are sure. Payment services are developing Apple Pay, Square, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, which allow you to pay for purchases using your smartphone, and mobile applications, such as Venmo and Splitwise, help you split a check with friends, optimize spending, and see where the money was spent.
Active supporters of electronic payments are millennials - a generation of people who grew up in the era of information technology and cannot imagine life without a smartphone. Experts expect that in 2016 alone, the total number of mobile payments will grow by 210%.
First human clone
Not later than 2036, the world's first cloned person will be "born", Americans believe. No known case of human genetic copying has yet been recorded, but scientists around the world are successfully creating "duplicates" of other mammals. In South Korea, for example, there is a clinic that offers the service of cloning a dog (of any size, age and breed) for $100,000.
The National Human Genome Research Institute in the United States explains that cloning humans is, from a technical point of view, much more difficult than any other creatures. Even if such a technology ever appears, it is unlikely that it will be widely used due to the moral, ethical, religious and legal aspects of the issue and will be approved at the state level. Moreover, the chances of success are usually very small - only 1% of attempts to clone an animal end up with the creation of a "successful copy".
Virtual doctor visits
According to forecasts of 65% of Americans, in 2036 people will visit doctors in virtual reality. Already today, many clinics in the United States practice providing remote services, offering medical consultations by phone, e-mail and webcam. And in 20 years, patients, wearing VR glasses, will be able to get an appointment with a doctor without getting up from the couch.
"Printed" human organs
According to 54% of respondents, 3D printing technologies will improve so much that they will make the “printing” of human organs a reality. Cells of a living organism will act as "ink", and printers will be able to reproduce the organ layer by layer. right size. Bioengineers at Wake Forest University, a private research institution in the US, are already performing surgery on animals to implant skin, ears, bones and muscles artificially "grown" in the laboratory.
"Connected" clothing
In 20 years, the clothes people wear will be connected to the Internet, 58% of US residents predict. The process has already started. Google, for example, is developing the Jacquard project. Its essence lies in the fact that manufacturers can intertwine conductive fibers with "ordinary" threads, thus creating a homogeneous fabric. By interacting with tiny sensors (for example, stroking a sleeve with sewn-in metal threads), a person will be able to control the electronics around him: turn on a smartphone, call, pause music, adjust the volume, turn off the lights in the room, start the car, etc.
Also last month, Google partnered with Levi's, one of the world's largest denim apparel manufacturers, to create a smart jacket. Thanks to a special sensor built into the sleeve, you can answer calls, control music playback and navigation, and more, without interrupting your other activities. Later this year, Nike will start selling self-lacing sneakers, and in Japan you can already buy shoes with a GPS tracker built into the heel that tracks the whereabouts of the owner of the shoe in real time. According to analysts, by 2025 the size of the market for wearable electronics will exceed $70.
Robots at the service of corporations
In the near future, robots with artificial intelligence will work in large companies, 39% of respondents are sure. Moreover, the “computer mind” will take the place not of an ordinary employee, but in the leadership, and will make decisions on its own. Manager robots will be highly valued if their intellect is sufficiently developed, and logic prevails over emotions. However, almost half (48%) of the respondents felt that such a scenario was unlikely.
From airport to space
In 2036, it will be possible to fly into space from the most ordinary airport, 45% of Americans predict. In the US, commercial space travel is being driven by SpaceX, a private company led by Elon Musk. 2016 has already become a breakthrough year for the industry: a few months ago, SpaceX managed to land the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a platform in the ocean for the first time, which will significantly reduce the cost of space launches in the future.
And the NASA space agency last year signed a contract with Boeing for the transportation of ISS crew members to orbit. According to forecasts, commercial trips to the ISS could start as early as 2017.
Dates with AI
People "dating" virtual boyfriends and girlfriends are common in 2036, 35% of Americans think. According to a third of the respondents, chatbots and artificial intelligence will someday replace the meetings and usual communication with a "live" person - like in the movie "She", where the main character falls in love with the operating system of his smartphone.
Today you will not surprise anyone with programs that can conduct a meaningful dialogue with people. For example, Microsoft's Xiaoice chatbot is a huge success in China. Millions of teens spend several hours a day texting Xiaoice, a "caring and thoughtful girl". Unlike other chat programs, her behavior is indistinguishable from a 17-year-old girl: she puts emoji and expresses sympathy, she can ask a stupid question and remembers what was said to her before. And so perfect "robot-lovers" will be in 20 years, it is not difficult to assume.
